- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Liberal
- Thunder Bay—Rainy River
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $144,359.62
- Government Page
- Feb/28/22 8:10:01 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, absolutely, the Russian people are not our enemy. The enemy is Putin. There are very many good Russian people. There are many people in Russia who are suffering, seeing their kids going off to fight a war that they themselves do not want. Certainly they are on our side. They are not on Putin's side.
As for war crimes, I would take a step back further and even suggest this. What really galls me is the fact that Russia continues to sit on the Security Council and is the president of the proceedings dealing with what is happening in Ukraine. When they are part of the decision-making body in the UN, I think we have to fundamentally start looking at some of the underpinnings of the UN, including Russia, which is clearly not in favour of globalization and the world order, and its position in the international legal order.
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- Feb/28/22 8:08:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the truth is that I personally had not considered what we are going to do with Belarus when I was in question period today. In fact, I admit that when the Bloc brought up Belarus, it caught me off guard, but I absolutely agree with the member.
I cannot speak for the government, but I agree that countries have to choose sides. It is the same with China: Choose a side. Either be on the side of globalization and the right side or be on the wrong side. Belarus chose. It chose to be on Russia's side. Let it suffer the same consequences as Russia.
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- Feb/28/22 8:06:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, indeed hindsight is 20-20. I think most of us a month ago, two months ago, six months ago, would not have predicted that Putin would actually have gone into Ukraine.
As to the situation right now and whether we should cut off Russian supplies of oil and gas to Canada, I personally support that idea. However, the devil is always in the details. What is an alternative right now? We certainly do not want people to be unable to heat their houses or to see businesses closing down in Quebec because they do not have access to heat or oil. I think our government has already said and made clear that all options are on the table. This is certainly something we have to consider.
Certainly we need to go on an economic blitzkrieg against Russia. We have to go on multiple fronts against Russia just like Russia went against Ukraine. We ought to harm Russia economically however we can, whether it means imports, exports or financial connections, absolutely everything. We go after Russia.
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- Feb/28/22 8:00:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, many Canadians have a connection with Ukraine. There are a lot of new immigrants from Ukraine in Canada, and first and foremost my thoughts are with them, because they have immediate family and friends in Ukraine. I can certainly imagine what it is like for them every time they hear the phone ring, wondering who is calling and about what.
There are many other Canadians like me. I spent the first number of years of my life living with my parents and grandparents in a part of Fort William, which is now Thunder Bay and which has a large Ukrainian-Canadian population. My baba was from near Horodenka and my dido, or grandfather, was from Kamyanets-Podilskyy. I spent many summer evenings as a child sitting with my baba on the steps of her corner store, which actually was not on the corner, partly because baba used to brazenly bribe me with Fudgesicles and Creamsicles from the store in order to get me to sit with her. She would sit for hours singing old Ukrainian hymns and telling stories about what used to happen in the old country. That was in between going in and out of the store and selling people cigarettes and candy.
Because so many of my early memories revolve around Ukraine and Ukrainians, even though I do not speak Ukrainian and even though I have only visited Ukraine once in my life, I feel very much that Ukraine is part of my soul.
Of course, people do not have to be Ukrainian in order to sympathize with what is happening in Ukraine or with Ukrainians. We all see the pictures, but the pictures are only a very small part of what is happening in Ukraine. Certainly, we have statistics, contested statistics, about the number of deaths and injuries, but let us remember what Joseph Stalin once said, which is that a million deaths is a statistic and one death is a tragedy. Certainly, for each statistic, every death is a tragedy; it means a phone call to a parent telling them a child will not be coming home or that a child will not have their parent coming home as they told the child they would.
All of this tragedy is the direct and total responsibility of Vladimir Putin and the people who support Vladimir Putin. It is Vladimir Putin who decided to walk in the steps of Joseph Stalin. Ukrainians and Russians are, in fact, brothers and sisters, but this is brother killing brother. The only brother who kills his brother is a madman like Putin, but let us not forget, in this immense human tragedy worthy of Dostoevsky, the suffering of many Russians as well, many of whom are dying fighting their brothers and sisters in Ukraine. Let us also not forget about the mothers and fathers of Russian soldiers who are anxiously awaiting their children's return from Ukraine.
As a doctor who has certainly dealt with death and has worked in places where I saw a lot of trauma, including close to war zones, I can absolutely tell members that the suffering of a parent losing a child or the suffering of a child losing a parent are exactly the same. It does not matter whether one is from Ethiopia, Haiti, Thunder bay, Ottawa, Ukraine or Russia.
In my allotted time I could have talked about more lofty issues, such as the fact that this invasion presents an existential threat to the international legal order, which it certainly does; how that international legal order grew, in no small part, out of the Second World War; and the fact that in so many ways the UN charter and international legal order were the result of the Second World War and the sacrifices so many Russians and Ukrainians made in that war. I also do not have too much time to talk about what we can and cannot do, other than to repeat what a number of people in our party have said, which is that all options remain on the table.
To my family in Ukraine, some of whom, as I speak, are waiting with guns for the Russians to come; to their parents who are worried and praying for them; to the people of Ukraine; to the very many good Russian people: I support you, my family supports you, the Canadian people support you, good people all around the world support you, and certainly this Parliament supports you.
Slava Ukraini.
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- Feb/8/22 8:18:24 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I will try to reply in French.
I agree, the solution to overdoses of narcotics is indeed naloxone. I think that all first responders should be able to administer naloxone. It really is the right answer to overdose problems.
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Madam Chair, I would like to thank the member for Edmonton Griesbach for his reference to Portugal, where I believe they have decriminalized drug use. Certainly, from what I know, as a result of that decriminalization there has been some improvement in the problem in Portugal, so I think it is certainly an interesting case study. I cannot say I know enough about decriminalization to give any definitive answer about it, but I do think it is something we ought to be seriously considering.
As for Bill C-216, I admit I have not read it, but I look forward to reading it.
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- Feb/8/22 8:15:06 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I certainly agree that we ought to be doing more for this. I have to point out that I think our government has done quite a bit in terms of addressing the opioid problem. Just since the pandemic, there has been $4.5 billion in top-ups to the transfers to the provinces; $100 million for mental health interventions for the people most severely affected by the pandemic; $500 million toward people suffering mental health problems, homelessness and substance abuse; and $66 million was announced in a recent budget for 30 new substance use and addiction programs.
However, I think the real difference is made at the grassroots level, and it is all those people who are working at that level, tirelessly, to try to find a solution where often solutions are not easy to find, who really contribute the most. It is not just all about—
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- Feb/8/22 8:08:48 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I am happy to speak to this issue, an issue that I have been involved with one way or another for about 30 years or more.
As a long-time emergency room doctor, many of those years in Thunder Bay but other places as well, I have seen a lot of overdoses. ICU doctors who work in Thunder Bay and also work in a lot of other places tell me that Thunder Bay is second only to Vancouver in terms of the number of people going to the ICU as a result of overdoses.
A few years ago in the Thunder Bay emergency room, we started to notice something different with overdoses. I remember someone coming in unconscious and because of his pinpoint pupils and his slow breathing, I figured he was a narcotics overdose, so I gave him Narcan or Naloxone and sure enough he woke up. After he woke up he asked what happened to him. I said he overdosed on narcotics and he said that he did not because he was smoking crack.
Drug dealers have started putting fentanyl and at times carfentanyl, which is the veterinary drug equivalent, which is far stronger, into all kinds of other drugs. People are getting hooked on narcotics and overdosing, not even knowing that it is narcotics they are doing.
When narcotic overdoses make it to the emergency room, they usually are okay, but a lot of people unfortunately do not make it to the emergency room. They are either pronounced dead in their house or they arrive VSA, vital signs absent. We try to resuscitate them and unfortunately we cannot.
Besides knowing about this problem from my position as an emergency room doctor, I am also familiar with it from my personal experiences. I know a lot of people who have family members and friends who passed away because of overdoses, kids who are growing up without a parent because of an overdose, or parents who lost a child because of an overdose.
I also know about this problem because, going door to door in two successive campaigns, a number of people told me about people they lost, usually their children. I know as a parent there is nothing worse than losing a child. Although I would say that certainly it is probably equally as bad for a child to lose a parent.
I also know the extent to which drug addiction, mental health, homelessness and crime are intertwined. Last year on the INAN committee on which I sat, we had several women tell us of the problem that indigenous women from farther north communities have when they come to Thunder Bay and they meet some guy with flashy clothes and a flashy car who invites them to a party to try drugs. They try drugs and they get addicted to drugs, and then they are asked to go into prostitution to pay for the price of those drugs.
Although our government has done a lot to address addictions, mental health and the opioid crisis, I do not think we have been as successful as we would like to be. Unfortunately, I do not know of any jurisdiction in the world that has been really successful in addressing this problem.
As a doctor, we spend a lot of years treating people with overdoses and hopefully maybe saving a few of them. I know the fix I provided in the emergency room was a temporary fix. People would often overdose again, so what is the answer? As a long-time doctor, I think one of the most important things to say as a doctor when we do not know is “I don't know”. I certainly say I do not know what the answer is to the opioid problem, but I do know that we need to do better.
I also know that there are many people in Thunder Bay and northwestern Ontario working tirelessly to find solutions on a case-by-case basis, and I really commend them for all their hard work. I would also like to make special mention of one group in my riding, a group who will not take no for an answer and have made it their mission to make a difference and that is Team DEK. DEK stands for Dayna Elizabeth Karle, who died due to an accidental overdose this past September. Her mother, Carolyn, and a bunch of like-minded determined women established Team DEK with the goal of establishing a long-term addiction treatment program for women in Thunder Bay, both indigenous and non-indigenous. This project has a lot of support both in Thunder Bay and northwestern Ontario.
It is really great to see on the issue of the opioid crisis all parties feeling passionately about this. Although we may have different views as to what the best answer to this problem is, hopefully we can leave partisan politics aside and not let it prevent us from considering all options because the only thing that really matters is preventing more needless deaths.
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- Feb/8/22 7:52:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Edmonton Griesbach, like me, has a riding with a large indigenous population. I wonder how much he thinks the answer to the opioid problem is a matter of directly dealing with opioids and how much of the answer involves dealing with the underlying socio-economic inequality, which is certainly part of the problem and fuels the crisis.
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- Feb/8/22 7:43:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Courtenay—Alberni for his words of wisdom. He seems to know a fair bit about this problem and seems quite passionate about it.
I do not know if he knows anything about this, but I know part of the problem with the opioid crisis is that so many drugs are laced with fentanyl. People will be smoking what they think is crack, but it is laced with fentanyl. As a result, they have an overdose of narcotics and they die of that overdose.
Does the member have any suggestion or know of any policy interventions that can address this problem?
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- Dec/1/21 10:36:56 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I want to tell the member opposite that although I represent Thunder Bay, I also represent everywhere between Thunder Bay and the Manitoba border, which includes quite a few trees, so I am certainly not just from the big city.
I remember that when I was in law school, I read a case with a WTO panel decision on softwood lumber tariffs imposed by the United States against Canada. That was 25 years ago and not a whole lot seems to have changed since then.
I know the opposition wants to think we are the enemies, but I would suggest that perhaps we are not. The enemy is forces in the United States that are not only protectionist but self-serving. Perhaps it is a bit of a stretch to suggest that we have any control over those protectionist forces, just as we have no control over the weather in Florida.
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